Hermione's Schapelle Corby Dream
by farae
Summary: Hermione is flying to Australia  the muggle way  to find her parents and attempt to restore their memories. She has an interesting dream, set in a muggle alternate universe, involving drug smuggling charges and Draco Malfoy.


A/N: Just a little something-something to get back into writing after far to long.

Disclaimer: Not mine, of course.

Hermione dozed lightly in her less than comfortable airline economy seat. She was mostly asleep, she thought, but she couldn't quite tell the difference between dream and reality:

_Hermione didn't get a wink of sleep throughout the long-haul flight from London to Brisbane, Australia. She watched movies in a blur of cartoons, love stories, colours and kisses. She ate a little of the just-edible economy food. She watched the sunrise over the North Queensland coastline._

_The jumbo jet landed smoothly on the hot black tarmac._

_Hermione had patiently waited to reach her carry on bag in the overhead compartment, not-so-patiently waited for her luggage to appear on the conveyor belt and was finally stumbling tiredly towards immigration and customs. Three steps past the immigration checkpoint she was approached by a sniffer dog and its handler._

"_Ma'am, I need to check your luggage. Come this way"_

_Hermione followed obediently. She had nothing to hide. She wasn't the type of girl who went anywhere near drugs or explosives, let alone attempting to smuggle them into a foreign country. _

_The customs officer unzipped the front pocket of her bag, the only one without a lock on it. Inside was a large bag filled with white powder. "Ma'am, could you tell me what this is"_

"_No, I have no idea what that is. That's not mine" Hermione replied, shocked. _

"_Is this your bag Ma'am?"_

"_Y-yes" Hermione stammered in shock and fear. _

"_Ma'am, you need to come with me so I can ask you some questions about the white substance I found in your bag"_

"_Y-yes… s-sir" she managed, her voice strangled and her eyes filling with tears. _

_She was lead into a secure area, and handed over to another officer. "Ma'am, the federal police will be he soon to ask you some questions". _

_0o0o0o0o0_

"_It's not mine! I don't know where it came from," she repeated. Over and over Hermione said those same words to no effect: to the customs officers, to the federal police, to her lawyer and finally to the judge and jury. _

_It didn't matter. Nothing she said mattered. No-one believed her to be innocent. _

_She was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment in Australia for smuggling illicit drugs, intent to supply illicit drugs, possession of illicit drugs, the list went on. She lost her place in the Cambridge Medical School and a medical degree she had been weeks away from commencing. She lost her boyfriend of two years, Ron Weasley, who did nothing to help her, though he claimed that he believed her innocence. The Weasleys abandoned her, and so to did Harry, for he was married to Ginny and would never give up his opportunity to have a family. Her parents were her only staunch supporters, but they had died during her imprisonment in a car crash. They wouldn't let her attend their funeral. She lost hope. _

_One year after her sentencing, a baggage handler was caught removing a package of drugs from a passenger's bag. His fingerprints had matched the previously unidentifiable ones on the bag of drugs she was accused of smuggling. She was free, but she could never get a place in a medical degree now. _

_Hermione called her lawyer "I want to sue them for everything I can. I lost my career because of this. I want every dollar you can get. I want them to pay." Prison had changed Hermione. She wasn't, and would never be a criminal, but she no longer trusted any person, government or system of laws. She found it much harder to see good in any person, where before she could hardly ever see the bad. She won millions through the courts. She didn't care how much it was, as long as she could run away. _

_Snow, she decided, was what she needed. After a full year in a hot, dusty Australian prison she craved the damp and the cold, mostly because it was exactly the opposite. London was cold and damp, but it was no longer home. Nowhere was home. Hermione left the small flat she had rented after her release, carrying nothing with her but her UK passport, a recently acquired Japanese work visa, her wallet and a spare pair of underwear in the pockets of the brand-new ski suit in her arms._

_She caught the train to the International Airport, buying the first available ticket to Japan. It was late November, perfect timing for the beginning of the skiing season in Japan's north. She had been there once before, to a tiny ski village which boasted amazing powder, night skiing and beautiful food. _

_Many hours of flying, and a stopover, and more flying later Hermione touched down at dawn on the cold, wet, Japanese runway. She went straight through immigration and customs and onwards towards the train station. She had arranged to meet a bus at a hotel in the afternoon but with several hours to spare, Hermione decided to do a little shopping. She made her way to the city's largest mall, a destination she had researched online after deciding never fly with checked luggage again, ever. _

_Several bags of designer clothes, a medium-sized suitcase and a quick bowl of ramen later, Hermione hailed a cab for the trip across town to the Hotel. In the cab she stuffed the clothes into the suitcase, sans bags, before looking out the window to see snow begin to fall on the bustling Japanese city. _

_0o0o0o0o0_

_Three years later, 23 year old Hermione Granger was in the kitchen of a small, but immensely popular, traditional Japanese restaurant in the tiny ski village she now called home. Since her arrival in Japan she had been alternately skiing in the winter and cycling in the summer. She had applied for the chef's apprenticeship at the restaurant just three weeks after her arrival due to a combination of restlessness and a love of Japanese food. She was now the head chef, as her 75-year-old teacher/ unofficial adoptive grandfather had recently retired. _

"_Hermione," said the waitress, continuing in Japanese: "The man at table three has asked to speak to the chef"_

"_Is it good talking or bad talking?" Hermione responded almost perfectly in the same language._

"_Good," Said the waitress, though she looked slightly uncertain._

_Hermione put her second-in-command in charge, took a deep breath and exited the kitchen. This was the first time a customer had asked to meet the chef since she had taken over. From her position just outside the kitchen Hermione could see a single figure at table three. He was facing away from her, but from what she could see he looked male, tall and with uncomfortably familiar blonde hair._

_Hermione approached the table quietly, hoping to observe the man a little longer before she spoke. She could see that he was Caucasian, so chose to speak to him in English: "Good Evening Sir, you asked to see the chef?"_

"_Yes" he said. The voice was as uncomfortably familiar as the hair. He turned to face her and exclaimed in surprise "Granger?" They had been enemies at school, of course. He was born into the upper echelons of society while she had been the incredibly bright a middle class girl on a scholarship. _

_Hermione wondered why Draco Malfoy, of all people, was sitting in the restaurant in her new hometown. "Malfoy" she gasped, losing her professional mask for a moment. She quickly returned it and followed up with a polite "Did you enjoy your meal?"_

"_You? You're the chef?" he whispered, taking a little longer to recover his decorum. _

"_Yes," Hermione replied, refraining from repeating her question about his meal._

_There was a brief silence. The blonde, who had finally realised that she had asked him a question, broke it. "The food was excellent! I thoroughly enjoyed every bite," he enthused "Can I get you a drink?"._

"What? A drink?" Hermione mumbled into fuzzy aeroplane blanket, dreaming on.

"Yes, miss, a drink. Would you like anything?" Said the young flight attendant who was pushing the drinks trolley.

"Oh! Just a water thank you" Hermione replied sleepily, consciousness finally taking hold. She looked at the flight map on her entertainment screen. Two hours until they reached Brisbane. Two hours until she could be searching for her parents in the hope that she could restore their memories, in the hope that they wouldn't hate her for what she had done. She wondered, just for a moment, why she had been dreaming of a non magical alternate universe in which drugs, jail, Japan and Draco Malfoy featured prominently in her life.


End file.
